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Domain: netlabs.net

Stories and comments across the archive that link to netlabs.net.

Comments · 8

  1. Fujitsu Lifebook by richieb · · Score: 1 · on Advice for Linux on a Laptop?
    I have had a Fujitsu Lifebook for over 3 years. It dual booted with Linux and Windows XP. I still have Red Hat 8.0 on it. Here is a web page describing my configuration.

    The only change I made since I got the machine was to upgrade the memory to 512MB.

  2. I wouldn't by Amsterdam+Vallon · · Score: -1, Flamebait · on Test-Driven Development by Example

    ... let Kent Beck mow my lawn, yet alone tamper with the minds of my development team.

    What a fucking sketch ball :-p

  3. George Welch by richieb · · Score: 2 · on Review: Pearl Harbor
    The book "Aces Wild" chronicles the story of George Welch and the sound barrier. I wrote a review of this book here: http://www.netlabs.net/~richieb/aces.html.

    Besides Welch and Taylor there was a flight of B-17s in the air that had arrived in Hawaii that Sunday morning. This flight was a subject of an early WW II movie called "Air Force".

    ...richie

  4. Re:Another Possibility by 4of12 · · Score: 2 · on Mystery Force Affecting Probes

    Sounds close.

    My guess was to resolve two questions with this deviated course observation.

    1. What is causing the course deviation?
    2. Where is all the unaccounted dark matter in the universe?

    If the course deviations get large enough they could point to the missing matter (assuming it is distributed inhomogeneously), if that is in fact, the cause of it all.

    Far from being an amateur astronomer, I'm still aspiring to achieve full-fledged diletante status.

  5. Re:Tangenitally related links by richieb · · Score: 2 · on Aaron: Computer Program And Artist (Maybe)
    Then there is the Mondrian Art Generator..

    ...richie

  6. Re:Communications & Software Development by richieb · · Score: 1 · on Communication and the Open Source Community
    The key word here is successful. Being polite, acknowledging everyone's contribution, and keeping the coders happy is important regardless of if it's open-source or not. In a corporate setting, you can browbeat your staff into writing anything you want them to. However, this approach is unlikely to result in a very successful outcome -- your end product will be (at best) mediocre, and you'll probably drive your best people away in the process.

    But how do you judge success? Some are obvious (eg. Linux), but others less so. For example, my most successful project eGTK has about 4 to 5 active developers, about 60 subscribers to our mailing list and I don't really know how many users. Does this qualify?

    In a corporation you can assign tasks to people. In an open source project you have to hope that someone will come and say "oh, that's interesting let me code that".

    Also, I don't believe that you can lead an open-source project without coding yourself, whereas I've worked on many projects where the project manager did not write a line of code.

    Another big difference between open-source and corporate project is schedules. OSS project have none - this makes a big difference.

    I've been programming professionally for nearly 12 years, and have worked on a lot of different projects in that time.

    Well, I've been coding for money for about twice as long... :-)

    ...richie "oldie but goodie"

  7. Art by richieb · · Score: 1 · on Feature:Open Source as an Ant Farm
    Here is my contribution to "software as art": Mondrian Applet.

    The source is art and so is the result.... ;-)

    ...richie

  8. ZZT and MegaZeux!!!! by richieb · · Score: 2 · on Ask Slashdot: Software for Youngsters?
    ZZT and MegaZeux are game building systems that allow you to play and program games in ASCII/VGA text mode. Because you can edit the fonts the graphics can get pretty fancy. With MegaZeux you can add sound to your games.

    Each games comes with a built-in programming language (an object-based one) that allows you to program the "robots" in the game. There are also many built-in elements.

    My son learned to program ZZT and MegaZeux by himself - by reading the help and by reading other people's code. He was 9 when he started.

    I had tried LOGO with him, but he quickly lost interest - it took too long to do anything beyond pretty spirals.

    ZZT and MegaZeux run on DOS (although a MegaZeux is being ported to Linux). Here are some links:

    www.zeux.org

    My son's Web page

    ...richie